More Psychology-Related Material

After starting our chapter about senses and perceptions, I was reminded of something I'd heard about previously- a condition in which people "hear" in color. I decided to do a little research and found that it was more than that. Synesthesia is a condition in which stimulation in a sensory pathway leads to stimulation in an autonomic pathway as well. The result is mixed perceptions. The author talks about how babies, as we've learned, have more neural connections than adults, and that scientists have suspected this could result in synesthesia. The article contains a video that I found to be far more interesting and informational than the article itself.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/video/crisscrossing-senses.html

Kids These Days

I found the stuff we learned in psych this week to be very interesting, although the chapter was rather long. I particularly enjoyed learning about cognitive development of babies. I saw a young child tonight and I found myself trying to figure out what stage of development she was at (pre-operational was my guess). The information we learned about in class regarding babies learning language was probably the coolest thing we talked about. It has always been a goal of mine to, when raising my own children, talk to them in two languages from day 1 in order for them to become bilingual. I think that would be so useful and I wish I could have had that when I was young. It would certainly make German class a little more awesome. Here is an article supporting this, and the fact that babies are capable of learning more than one language from birth. I quite enjoyed it.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130214111606.htm

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

It's late and I'm tired so I found a good article about sleep. We learned a lot more than I expected to about sleep this weak, and now I'm all worried about my sleep debt. This chapter has really made me aware of how little sleep I actually get, and, call me paranoid I've noticed some of the mentioned effects. Very troublesome. Regardless, I've found a way to solve all of our problems: learn while you sleep. I found this interesting yet simple article online that talks about a topic many people think they are familiar with: classical conditioning. It entails learning a specific piece of information using association while you're asleep. I think Mrs. Niemela mentioned using techniques similar to this to learn some information in college....suspiscious. Her type of information is significantly more difficult to grasp than smells (read the article to understand). The only fair conclusion I can draw is she is not of this world. The End.


A link for  your reading torture (but really, read it):
http://www.nature.com/news/how-to-learn-in-your-sleep-1.11274